@workingpaper {462311,
title = {Fertility Restrictions and Life Cycle Outcomes: Evidence from the One Child Policy in China},
year = {Working Paper},
note = {(Job Market Paper)},
month = {2016},
abstract = {I use the experience of China{\textquoteright}s One Child Policy to examine how fertility restrictions affect economic and social outcomes over the lifetime. The One Child Policy imposed a birth quota and heavy penalties for {\textquotedblleft}out-of-plan{\textquotedblright} births. Using variation in the fertility penalties across provinces over time, I examine how fertility restrictions imposed early in the lives of individuals affected their educational attainment, marriage and fertility decisions, and later life economic outcomes. Exposure to stricter fertility restrictions when young leads to higher education, more white-collar jobs, delayed marriage, and lower fertility. Further consequences include lower rates of residing with the elderly, higher household income, consumption, and saving. Finally, exposure to stricter fertility restrictions in early life increases later life female empowerment as measured by an increase in the fraction of households headed by women, female-oriented consumption, and gender-equal opinions. Overall, fertility restrictions imposed when people are young have powerful effects throughout the life cycle. (JEL classification: H70, I20, J00, O12)},
author = {Wei Huang}
}
@workingpaper {457746,
title = {Fetal Origin Hypothesis over Life Cycle: A Tale of Two Disasters},
year = {Working Paper},
month = {2016},
abstract = {This paper uses the largest plague in the 20th century and the Great Pandemic as natural experiments to test the fetal origin hypothesis. The plague arrived in northeast China unexpectedly in October 1910 and largely subsided by March 1911, killing over 60 thousand people. The results indicate that women exposed to the plague in-utero displayed worse health, lower cognition, higher depression, and poorer life quality. In addition, they also presented lower literacy, lower spousal education, fewer children, lower household income, receiving less transfer from children, and expending less on medical care. I do not find robust evidence for men or for the effects of the plague at ages 1-5. In contrast, using the deaths caused by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic across countries, I find that experiencing the flu both at birth and during early childhood leads to significantly higher mortality in later life. Since the plague infection lead to death for sure while the flu did not, these results deepen our understanding the impacts on the life course of early childhood experiences and help to reconcile the conflicting findings in the literature.Keywords: Long-run effects, In-utero, Health},
author = {Wei Huang}
}
@workingpaper {456016,
title = {The Power of Social Pensions},
year = {Working Paper},
month = {2016},
abstract = {This paper examines the impacts of social pension provision among people of different ages. Utilizing the county-by-county rollout of the New Rural Pension Scheme in rural China, we find that, among the age-eligible people, the scheme provision leads to higher household income (18 percent) and food expenditure (10 percent), lower labor supply (6 percent), and better health (11-14 percent). In addition, among the age-ineligible adults, the pension scheme shifts them from farming to non-farming work, lowers insurance participation rate, but does not change income, expenditure or health significantly. Finally, among the children aged below 15, the pension scheme leads to more pocket money received, more caring from grandparents, improved health, and higher schooling rate.\ (JEL classifications: E21, H55, I38, O22)},
author = {Wei Huang and Zhang, Chuanchuan}
}
@workingpaper {223346,
title = {Understanding the Effects of Education on Health: Evidence from China},
year = {Working Paper},
month = {2016},
abstract = {Using temporal and geographical variation in the implementation of compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) in China, I show that education significantly reduces the rates of reported fair or poor health, underweight, and smoking, and enhances cognition. Furthermore, the cognition and income only explain 15 percent and 7 percent of the impact of the CSLs on self-reported health. Suggestive evidence shows that spillovers from increased education of other people in the local region could explain over 25 percent.\ (JEL classification: I12, I21, I28)},
author = {Wei Huang}
}
@workingpaper {185656,
title = {One-Child Policy, Marriage Distortion and Welfare Loss},
year = {Working Paper},
month = {2016},
abstract = {This paper studies the marriage distortion and the associated welfare loss caused by the One-Child Policy (OCP) in China. Using the variation in the ethnicity-specific assigned birth quotas and different fertility penalties across provinces over time, we first show that the OCP induced a significantly higher unmarried rate and more interethnic marriages. Using the sufficient statistics approach, we derive a formula for the social welfare loss caused by the OCP-induced lower fertility and marriage distortion, and it only depends on the estimated reduced-form elasticities. Our estimates imply that the welfare loss caused by lowered fertility and marriage distortion is 2.6 and 1.1 percent of annual household income, respectively. (JEL codes: I31, J12, J13, J18)Keywords: One-Child Policy, Marriage Distortion, Welfare Loss},
author = {Wei Huang and Zhou, Yi}
}
@workingpaper {185256,
title = {Overconfidence and Health Insurance Participation among the Elderly},
year = {Working Paper},
month = {2015},
abstract = {Individuals may have imperfect information about their health status, leading to suboptimal decisions in insurance participation. Using nationally representative samples of the elderly in US and China, we find that people with lower socio-economic status and poorer health are relatively less likely to realize how unhealthy they are and this overconfidence is associated with no insurance participation. Further analysis suggests that insurance participation may not induce more accurate recognition in health status yet physical examination with updated health information provided will induce higher insurance participation among the overconfident people afterwards. These findings help to answer the two puzzles in health insurance participation - insufficient participation and advantageous selection.\ (JEL codes: I12, I13, J14)Keywords: Overconfidence, Health, Health Insurance Participation},
author = {Wei Huang and Luo, Mi}
}
@workingpaper {246856,
title = {Economic Conditions and Mortality: Evidence from 200 Years of Data},
year = {Submitted},
note = {Press:\ The Washington Post},
abstract = {Using data covering over 100 birth-cohorts in 32 countries, we examine the short- and long-term effects of economic conditions on mortality. We find that small, but not large, economic booms increase contemporary mortality. Yet booms from birth to age 25, particularly those during adolescence, lower adult mortality. A simple model can rationalize these findings if economic conditions differentially affect the level and trajectory of both good and bad inputs into health. Indeed, air pollution and alcohol consumption increase in booms. In contrast, booms in adolescence raise adult incomes and improve social relations and mental health, suggesting these mechanisms dominate in the long run.\ (JEL\ Codes: H51, I10, I38, N10).},
url = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w22690},
author = {David M Cutler and Wei Huang and Adriana Lleras-Muney}
}
@article {456006,
title = {A Real Estate Boom with Chinese Characteristics},
journal = {Journal of Economic Perspectives},
year = {Forthcoming},
abstract = {Chinese housing prices rose by over 10 percent per year in real terms between 2003 and 2014, and are now between two and ten times higher than the construction cost of apartments. At the same time, Chinese developers built 100 billion square feet of residential real estate. This boom has been accompanied by a large increase in the number of vacant homes, held by both developers and households. This boom may turn out to be a housing bubble followed by a crash, yet that future is far from certain. The demand for real estate in China is so strong that current prices might be sustainable, especially given the sparse alternative investments for Chinese households, so long as the level of new supply is radically curtailed. Whether that happens depends on the policies of the Chinese government, which must weigh the benefits of price stability against the costs of restricting urban growth.\ },
url = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w22789},
author = {Edward Glaeser and Wei Huang and Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer}
}
@article {163286,
title = {One-Child Policy and the Rise of Man-Made Twins},
journal = {The Review of Economics and Statistics},
volume = {98},
number = {3},
year = {2016},
pages = {467-476},
abstract = {This paper examines an unintended response to the One-Child Policy in China: twinning births. Analysis of population census data shows that the One-Child Policy has accounted for more than one-third of the increase in the reported births of twins since the 1970s. Investigation using birth space with prior births and height difference within twins suggests that the increase in births of twins is partly due to parents reporting regularly-spaced children as twins to avoid the policy violation punishment. The study highlights the possibility of individual behavioral response to undesirable government policies and the potential social consequences.JEL Codes: J08, J11, J13;\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ Keywords: Twins, One-Child Policy, China},
url = {http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00567},
author = {Wei Huang and Xiaoyan Lei and Yaohui Zhao}
}
@article {163231,
title = {Collaborating with People Like Me: Ethnic Co-authorship within the US},
journal = {Journal of Labor Economics},
volume = {33(3)},
number = {S1},
year = {2015},
note = {Press:\ The Washington Post,\ Insider Higher ED,\ Talent Management,\ Freakeconomics},
month = {2015},
pages = {S289-S318},
abstract = {This study examines the ethnic identify of the co-authors of over 1.2 million papers with US addresses from 1985 to 2008. It finds a striking change in the ethnic composition of authors, with the proportion with English and European names falling while the proportion of names from China and other developing countries increases. The greater variety of ethnicity is associated with considerable homophily among research teams, as persons of similar ethnicity tend to work together far more frequently than can be explained by chance. The paper identifies a modest negative relation between homophily and the potential scientific contribution of the papers as measured by the impact factor of journals of publication and the number of citations, with the latter attributable to the previous publishing performance of authors. Using a Markov analysis to calculate a steady state rate of homophily, the paper finds that the rates is close to the steady state and thus likely to continue at high levels into the future. The analysis also finds that papers written by authors at different addresses and that cite larger numbers of references are more likely to get into high impact journals and to gain more citations than other papers.},
url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/678973},
author = {Richard B. Freeman and Wei Huang}
}
@article {163236,
title = {Do ABCs Get More Citations Than XYZs?},
journal = {Economic Inquiry},
volume = {53},
number = {1},
year = {2015},
note = {Press:\ Insider Higher ED,\ Science},
pages = {773-789},
abstract = {Using a sample of US-based scientific journal articles, I examine the relationship between author surname initials and paper citations, finding that the papers with first authors whose surname initials appear earlier in the alphabet get more citations, and that this effect does not exist for non-first authors. Further analysis shows that the alphabetical order effect is stronger in those fields with longer reference lists, and that such alphabetical bias exists among citations by others and not for self-citations. In addition, estimates also reveal that the alphabetical order effect is stronger when the length of reference lists in citing papers is longer. These findings suggest that the order in reference lists plays an important role in the alphabetical bias.},
url = {http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecin.12125/abstract},
author = {Wei Huang}
}
@article {163281,
title = {When Does Education Matter? The Protective Effect of Education for Cohorts Graduating in Bad Times},
journal = {Social Science \& Medicine},
volume = {127},
year = {2015},
pages = {63{\textendash}73},
abstract = {
Using Eurobarometer data, we document large variation across European countries in education gradients in income, self-reported health, life satisfaction, obesity, smoking and drinking. While this variation has been documented previously, the reasons why the effect of education on income, health and health behaviors varies is not well understood. We build on previous literature documenting that cohorts graduating in bad times have lower wages and poorer health for many years after graduation, compared to those graduating in good times. We investigate whether more educated individuals suffer smaller income and health losses as a result of poor labor market conditions upon labor market entry. We confirm that a higher unemployment rate at graduation is associated with lower income, lower life satisfaction, greater obesity, more smoking and drinking later in life. Further, education plays a protective role for these outcomes, especially when unemployment rates are high: the losses associated with poor labor market outcomes are substantially lower for more educated individuals. Variation in unemployment rates upon graduation can potentially explain a large fraction of the variance in gradients across\ different countries.
},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614004961},
author = {David M Cutler and Wei Huang and Adriana Lleras-Muney}
}
@article {200986,
title = {Collaboration: Strength in diversity},
journal = {Nature},
volume = {513},
number = {7518},
year = {2014},
pages = {305},
url = {http://www.nature.com/news/collaboration-strength-in-diversity-1.15912},
author = {Richard B. Freeman and Wei Huang}
}
@article {163221,
title = {Health, Height, Height Shrinkage, and SES at Older Ages: Evidence from China},
journal = {American Economic Journal: Applied Economics},
volume = {5},
number = {2},
year = {2013},
note = {Press:\ Wall Street Journal Blogs,\ HUFFPOST,\ New York Times,\ Science Daily,\ Atlantic,\ Telegraph,\ Inquisitr,\ KPCC},
pages = {86-121},
abstract = {In this paper, we build on the literature that examines associations between height and health outcomes of the elderly. We investigate the associations of height shrinkage at older ages with socioeconomic status, finding that height shrinkage for both men and women is negatively associated with better schooling, current urban residence, and household per capita expenditures. We then investigate the relationships between pre-shrinkage height, height shrinkage, and a rich set of health outcomes of older respondents, finding that height shrinkage is positively associated with poor health outcomes across a variety of outcomes, being especially strong for cognition outcomes.},
url = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.5.2.86},
author = {Wei Huang and Xiaoyan Lei and John Strauss and Geert Ridder and Yaohui Zhao}
}
@article {163226,
title = {Effects of Education on Cognition at Older Ages: Evidence from China{\textquoteright}s Great Famine},
journal = {Social Science \& Medicine},
volume = {98},
year = {2013},
pages = {54-62},
abstract = {This paper explores whether educational attainment has a cognitive reserve capacity in elder life. Using pilot data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we examined the impact of education on cognitive abilities at old ages. OLS results showed that respondents who completed primary school obtained 18.2 percent higher scores on cognitive tests than those who did not. We then constructed an instrumental variable (IV) by leveraging China{\textquoteright}s Great Famine of 1959e1961 as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of education on cognition. Two-stage least squares (2SLS) results provided sound evidence that completing primary school significantly increases cognition scores, especially in episode memory, by almost 20 percent on average. Moreover, Regression Discontinuity (RD) analysis provides further evidence for the causal interpretation, and shows that the effects are different for the different measures of cognition we explored. Our results also show that the Great Famine can result in long-term health consequences through the pathway of losing educational opportunities other than through the pathway of nutrition deprivation.},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613004735},
author = {Wei Huang and Zhou, Yi}
}
@inbook {163271,
title = {China{\textquoteright}s {\textquotedblleft}Great Leap Forward{\textquotedblright} in Science and Engineering},
booktitle = {Global Mobility of Research Scientists: The Economics of Who Goes Where and Why},
year = {2015},
note = {Press:\ The Washington Post},
pages = {155-175},
publisher = {Elsevier Inc},
organization = {Elsevier Inc},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780128013960},
author = {Richard B. Freeman and Wei Huang},
editor = {AIdo Geuna}
}